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Lying deep in Mississippi is an area known to many readers of contemporary fiction as Yoknapatawpha County. Here, within an area of 2400 square miles, between the Northern bills and the fertile bottom lands of that state, live approximately fifteen thousand people. This county and these people are the creations of' William Faulkner's fertile imagination, and they form the subject matter of most of his fiction. [...]

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The purpose of this thesis is to show the relationship of technique to theme in Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy. The central theme, the continuous conflict in man between the world of nature and that of money, is revealed most clearly through certain structural and symbolic techniques. The conflict between the two ways of life is expressed structurally by a series of encounters; in the three novels, and symbolically by the tension between opposing symbols. The encounters usually take the form of a struggle between a man and a woman, the man representing the world of money, the woman, the world of nature. The most powerful symbols of nature, earth and season, are opposed by the most powerful symbols of the world of ownership, money, automobiles and monuments. The continuity of life is dramatized in the circular structure, which is seen in the apparently endless repetition of both the central conflict and the major symbols. In spite of certain limitations of the Trilogy, such as the fact that it must rely upon other books in the Yoknapatawpha cycle, and an unevenness which results from the great length of time in which It was written, it merits a more detailed study than has been accorded it by the majority of the critics in the past. A survey of the existing criticism indicates that it is inadequate largely because it fails to probe the novels deeply enough. Instead it often relies heavily on the traditional approach to Faulkner first suggested by George Marion O'Donnell, which says that all Faulkner's work is a variation of the theme of the struggle between Sartoris, the moral aristocrat, and Snopes, the amoral poor white. As a result of the influence of the traditional view, relatively few attempts have been made to approach the Trilogy in any other manner. The best approach to the meaning of the Trilogy is not through fixed interpretations but through technique. A detailed analysis of symbolic and structural technique in The Hamlet, The Town and The Mansion reveals the conflict and the continuity of life, and also the central focus of the novel. The focus in the Trilogy is not upon Flem Snopes but upon man. Man's struggle to reconcile the world of nature with that of money and ownership leads him to an understanding of the nature of evil within himself. The Trilogy stresses the fact that not only must man become morally aware of the evil within himself, but he must also struggle constantly to overcome it. Because he is a part of both worlds he must reconcile them as Ratliff does, not reject them as Stevens does. The reality of Faulkner's presentation of the conflict and continuity of man's life, as revealed by technique, makes the Trilogy a significant part of his work, worthy of a detailed study. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

It is an interesting and seldom noted fact that the young protagonist—the boy or girl between the ages of ten and twenty-one—appears again and again in the novels and short stories of William Faulkner. Since Faulkner wrote for an adult audience which might well lose interest in a non-adult hero, and since his themes involve violent and even sensational aspects such as suicide, rape, lynching and castration, which are part of an adult world, he must have had some definite purpose in using a young protagonist. A closer look at the works in which young people play major roles will reveal that, with few exceptions, the young protagonist is involved in a conflict with one of society's many unwritten codes of behavior, which is exerting pressure on him to conform to its dictates. Furthermore, it becomes apparent that Faulkner is using the young protagonist for two main purposes: to show, in microcosm, the various relationships between individuals of any age and the social codes, and to remind the reader of the constant opportunity to use free will, to free oneself from destructive or immoral situations and demands, which all individuals possess but which the child particularly utilizes. In showing how the young protagonist resolves his conflict, then, Faulkner seems to be making a very significant statement on both individualism and conformity, man and the social codes. In this thesis I have discussed several of Faulkner's young people in terms of the particular codes which they encounter. These I have called The Familial Code, The Religious Code, The Racial Code and The Chivalric Code. The order in which these codes are presented is determined firstly by the order in which they might be encountered by a child as he grows up. They represent, in other words, a constant movement outward from almost instinctive emotional responses to highly sophisticated and idealistic concepts. At the same time, I move towards codes of major importance in Faulkner's writing—The Racial and Chivalric Codes—placing the most emphasis on them by examining in greater depth those works in which they occur. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

The thesis describes the consistent thematic use of and the steady artistic development in the Christian myth as it appears in William Faulkner's novels. Although I concentrate on the use of Biblical allusions, other mythical references are examined when they become a part of the pattern described, as in Soldier's Pay and The Sound and the Fury. A Fable is examined first because its explicit allegorical use of the myth clearly indicates the direction Faulkner takes in the earlier stages of his artistry. It presents the fundamental conflict between "Authority," which would shape man in its own image, and the corporal-Christ's belief in the primacy of the whole being unconstrained by ideology. Such belief is "capable of containing all of time and all of man” in one unutterable vision. In order to emphasize Faulkner's development toward this articulation of the-myth, I analyze his "apprentice works," Soldier's Pay, Mosquitoes, and Sartoris, and then the later novels in which the myth is a primary element, The Sound and the Fury and Light in August. Each of these novels rejections institutions which repress man's self-expression and contains a movement toward the "timeless moment" of a vision of the essential wholeness of life. In Soldier's Pay that moment occurs amidst the sterility and fragmentation that society has instilled into Donald Mahon. At the end of the novel, the Negro church service overwhelms Joe Gilligan and Rector Mahon with its effusion of a perfect conjunction of life's elements, "sweat,...sex and death and damnation," and it enables them to experience their own profound humanity. Mosquitoes juxtaposes the superficiality and impotence aboard the Nausikaa with Fairchild's comprehension of the same primary unity of "the hackneyed accidents which make up this world." Sartoris portrays Bayard's rejection of life because of his inability to fuse his family tra- dition with the meaninglessness of his own war experiences. Then, foreshadowing the rebirth motif in Light in August, Bayard dies on the day his son is born; but his wife rejects the Sartoris tradition by naming the child Benbow Sartoris, thus uniting the placidity of her own life as a Benbow with the energy of the Sartorises. In The Sound and the Fury and Light in August, both poles of the conflict are expressed in terms of the Christian myth. The Compson narrators all have rigid perceptual frameworks which are linked with a view of Christianity as an oppressive ideology. In contrast, Dilsey's experience in the Easter service is an expression of the acceptance of the whole man which allows one to see the integrity of life and is timeless because it subsumes all of time, "de beginnin’ en de endin,'” into an instant of perception. Light in August deals with society's imposition of its definitions on individuals and Joe, like Christ, is martyred because his life is perceived as a threat to its pattern of order. Then, in the conjunction of Joe's death with the birth of Lena's baby, one sees a union of the suffering brought by "evil" and the ecstasy of creation. Both poles, nativity and crucifixion, are part of the Christian myth; both are part of life itself and when conjoined, bring a comprehension of the divinity of life experienced in its wholeness. Thus, in Faulkner's works, the Christian myth becomes, in Mark Schorer's words, "a large controlling image...which gives philosophical meaning to the facts of ordinary life." The thematic consistency with which the myth is used underscores that meaning. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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